Rosanna Road: safety

I rise to again put on the record the Ivanhoe community’s concerns with Rosanna Road. I note that VicRoads has again failed to address the community’s concerns in relation to the safety of Rosanna Road. This is a dangerous road in my electorate. Lives will be lost — mark my words — as a result of the trucks and the cars that use Rosanna Road. There have been many accidents. On the weekend of 26-27 November there was another serious accident on Rosanna Road. The camber of the roads at the intersection of Lower Plenty Road, Rosanna Road and Greensborough Highway is poor, and cars have run through the front fences of local houses. There are far too many trucks on Rosanna Road. Thousands of cars from the outer northern suburbs, where there are poor public transport links, are driving down Rosanna Road, fighting for room with many trucks on very narrow lanes.

This government has finally put forward some bids for funding through Infrastructure Australia. None of them relate to the northern suburbs of Melbourne, and none of them relate to fixing Rosanna Road. VicRoads needs to reduce the load limits of the trucks, it needs to ban trucks in right-hand lanes, it needs to install noise detection cameras to put unroadworthy trucks off the road and it needs to establish curfews at night. It needs to protect the residents of Rosanna Road.

I note that the Ombudsman’s annual report this year shows that complaints about VicRoads accounted for 5 per cent of the total number of complaints the Ombudsman received. VicRoads needs to lift its game, and so does the government, to fix Rosanna Road.